CIA Agents Sleep Around All The Time, Says Ex-Spook

Your boss is caught in the act of "going at it" with a junior
colleague, and it's perfectly acceptable.

That's the espionage division of the CIA, according to former
clandestine operations officer Reuel Marc Gerecht,
who wrote a piece forThe
New Republic. For Gerecht, espionage is a loose culture,
populated by "bottom feeders," and is better left alone if
America wants good intelligence.

From the piece:

When I was in the agency, my colleagues were amused,
occasionally disappointed, but never shocked when married
officers were discovered cavorting with their secretaries or
other co-workers at the office, in parking lots, hotels, and
safe-houses—which, of course, are not supposed to be used for
trysts. Case officers could get into trouble if their passions
led them to keep foreign mistresses no one knew about. The agency
maintained an important rule requiring employees to report
continuing, meaningful romantic contact.

Historically speaking, Gerecht says, extramarital affairs aren't
used as "leverage" against agents. If so, the Russians would have
"riddled the Agency" with holes and exploitations.

Generally, Gerecht says, as long as agents are forthcoming with
their colleagues, infidelity is not frowned upon — except, of
course, in the case of lasting relationships with foreigners.

The moment General Petraeus put himself into a
position where his private behavior became something he needed to
hide from the public — as
stated in his resignation letter — he essentially
put national security at risk. It's exactly the type of
compromise which would put any government worker at immediate
risk of losing a Top Secret clearance.

Granted our understanding of security clearances and
punishment stems from the military, where adultery is a
punishable offense (along the lines of a misdemeanor).
Furthermore, Pateaus was a spook in that he worked for the CIA,
but he wasn't really a spook.

He was a career military man with a background in military
special operations.

From Gerecht:

Unlike the U.S. military post-Vietnam, where senior
officers are supposed to be moral role models, the CIA—that is,
the Clandestine Service, the engine room of
espionage and covert action that has always defined the agency’s
ethos—has been much more relaxed about these
things.

It's easy to believe that romance, and short meaningless flings,
are as much a part of espionage as tiny cameras. This isn't
espionage though. This is a head of state. Not just post-Vietnam,
but post-Lewinsky.

Following Petraeus' resignation, New
York Times reporter Stephen Kinzler
wrote an outstanding piece on former CIA head Allen Dulles,
who had at least "a hundred" affairs between 1953 to 1961.
Consequently, the narrative of Mad Men begins just after Dulles'
retirement — relatively speaking, we can't possibly compare
acceptable behavior in the workplace between these two periods
(if so, I'd be smoking while I write this).

Washington
Post writer Olga Khazan notes
that very few security clearances have been revoked due to sexual
behavior, mostly for criminal sexual misconduct and criminal
records. Sexual trysts rarely justified suspending security
clearance, she reports, as long as the trists are "fully
mitigated by ‘passage of time without recurrence’ and the absence
of any susceptibility to blackmail or coercion.”

CSM Marvin L.
Hill

CNN
talked to an unnamed official who said the FBI investigated
Petraeus initially "to see if this relationship posed a
potential security risk" — adding that there was no criminal
wrongdoing, they just feared he might be "in a vulnerable
spot."

And recently, the folks at SOFREP, a website run by and for the
special operations community,
reported in their e-book that people within the Agency wanted
Petraeus out, and that they threatened to ruin him politically if
he didn't step down.

Gerecht at least gives some indication of this risk:

The agency maintained an important rule requiring
employees to report continuing, meaningful romantic
contact. But there was a fair amount
of flexibility built in—since operatives, not a sentimental lot,
could keep a bed partner for some time and truthfully say that
their lovers really didn’t mean all that much to them.

Unreal.

The CIA's espionage division is one thing, being a spy with
a cover or a case officer in a foreign land, sure that's
understandable — it's not just human, it's secretive information
gathering. But infidelity in the workplace, especially if that
workplace is in the military or in intelligence, handling Top
Secret materials, or if you're a head of a clandestine agency,
very much in the public eye, may be another.

Which would explain the Agency's rule of always disclosing
an intramural relationship.

Gerecht cites numerous examples of why Americans betray
their country — greed, ideology, etc. — and says it's unlikely to
happen over a lover. Furthermore, he asks the nation not to set
the FBI on more agents. After all, according to Gerecht, having
espionage agents with loose morals makes for a stronger
America.

From the piece:

Unlike soldiers, who have each other’s backs in battle,
case officers build on both trust and deceit. And they work in a
promotion system that often rewards intellectually dishonest
operatives for making a mediocre new recruit seem like solid
gold. This sort of thing tends to make officers jaded pretty
quickly. Historically, prudes have rarely done well in the
institution.